Why Bike Races Should Stop Paying for Attention

We live in the attention economy.

The primary goal is simply to be noticed. Sure, this applies to personal brands, but I am more interested in how this impacts bike races, trail orgs, and rural communities. You’re competing for attention. Just to get noticed …

This has occupied so much of my attention lately. We're not only tackling it in the classroom in one of my writing-for-social-media classes, but I also wrestle with it for my personal brand and Trail Builder Magazine.

If we can’t get people to “stop the scroll” and pay attention to our content, we’re losing out. For bike races, that means people registering for your race. For rural communities, it’s about people discovering that your community exists.

There’s organic content (social media, articles, etc.), and then there’s paid content (ads). Which one deserves your attention?

Recently, I was at an event shooting photos for a small town. Lots of others were capturing content, from UGC creators to media outlets and more. And then there were advertising partners. These are media platforms that rural communities hire to help spread the word about their communities across the region.

Through paid advertising.

What struck me was how small towns are leveraging these media outlets' reach and platforms to raise and grow awareness of their communities. This happens through ad space in print magazines, social media collaborations, email marketing, and more.

In the cycling world, this is the bread and butter for cycling media outlets that do the same. Bike races pay to have their events featured across homepages, social media, and email newsletters to get more people to sign up.

Yes, this is standard practice and part of the whole advertising ecosystem.

I just believe there’s a better way …

Earlier this year, I spoke with an advertising representative at a major outdoor media outlet about pricing for one of the bike races I’m working with. For $3,000, our ads on their platform would be guaranteed to hit 150,000 impressions. Sounds impressive, but on average, the CTR (click-through rate) would deliver 50 website clicks.

Wait, 50?

If the ad performed well, we could get 100.

For $3,000?

When I publish an organic piece of content for Trail Builder Magazine, I get hundreds of clicks (or more). That’s just one article.

With paid ads, what are we really paying for?

I had a similar conversation with a friend who's a race director and puts on numerous races each calendar year. We talked about paid ads and these baseline metrics. Then the conversation turns toward “owning our own ecosystem.” Meaning, instead of paying to be on someone else’s platform, what if we grew our own media ecosystem?

That means directing our time and attention to our own content on our own platforms, rather than a “pay-to-play” model. A bike race or rural community can drop $3,000 for 150,000 digital impressions, which sounds impressive, but getting only 50-100 clicks? We can easily surpass that on our own platforms … with just one post.

The key then is this … we need to grow our own platforms.

Also, not all media outlets are even good on social media. Some flat-out suck at it. Sure, they may have 10K-25K email subscribers, but if your race is one of ten ads in a too-long email, does anyone notice? It just becomes white noise.

Last week in one of my classes, we talked about how we’re all allergic to paid ads. If we’re watching Hulu and an ad pops up every 7 minutes, we just grab our phones and scroll until it's over. We pay to block ads on YouTube. We ignore ads on social media.

No one wants to be sold to.

The question then becomes: how do you sell (or promote) without selling?

Again, that's why I keep returning to the power of (organic) content marketing.

If I were standing before a room of race directors, here’s one simple message I would share…

Own your own media ecosystem.

Interestingly, I will be doing this very thing next month in Tucson at the Bicycle Industry Summit. Listen, I’m not anti-media outlet. Heck, I even own one. I just believe race directors are better off playing the long game and building their own media ecosystem.

• Your website

• Your social media platforms

• Your email newsletter

• Organic content, articles you can get published for free on these outlets' websites, will perform better than any ad.

No, this is not a quick fix. It’s about playing the long game. Also, I’m not anti-ads. Done well, they have their place. What I am saying is that you have permission to not only own your content, but the whole content distribution process. Yes, that means getting better at social media and content marketing. In the long run, I’d contend that is a better investment.